


Chain of Death

by turtlesparadise



Category: Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Bombs, Violence, first person POV, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-20 13:01:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4788197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turtlesparadise/pseuds/turtlesparadise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a drabble written in response to a prompt on Tumblr - asking Legend to describe their 'preferred kill.'   One shot, written in first person POV.  </p>
<p>[Note:  I've altered some of this since it was originally posted to better reflected my revised headcanon and background for Legend.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chain of Death

I’d be lying to you and to myself if I said I didn’t enjoy the job from time to time.   There’s a certain sort of queer satisfaction in completely obliterating your target – particularly when that target has committed an unspeakable wrong.  Sometimes they betray principles or ideals – when I was younger, yeah, I was the one out front waving my freak-flag against Shinra.

Well…times have changed, haven’t they?  Loyalties shift, ideals change.  And now I wear the suit, I work for Shinra's Department of Administrative Research.  But that’s a topic for another day.  There are other times when your target betrays you personally, and hurts people you care about, whether it’s intentionally or not.  When that happens?  When _that_ happens, all bets are off, pally.  Hurt someone I love, and I’ll take it out of your goddamned _soul,_ with compounded interest.  My methods are straightforward; some would say bloody and ruthless.

Typically, I prefer a quick kill; in and out, avoid collateral damage wherever possible.  I’m not an animal, I’m just good at what I do, and killing innocent bystanders isn’t my style.  But, it happens.  Sometimes people are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Bombs are not exactly precision weapons, you can’t zero in on a single target as easily as a sharpshooter with a rifle and a scope would.  

Still, I can predict them better than most.  I know how to detonate them - and when - to get the results that I want.   It takes calculation and precision to set off chain bombs at just the right moment, in the right place, to hit just the right target.  Sometimes it’s done on the fly – light the fuse, chuck ‘em over your shoulder while you’re covering your partner or just trying to get the hell way before everything goes sky-high - but even then, you’ve got to know what the fuck you’re doing.  And I do.

I’m the only one who really does, when it comes to chain bombs.  I suppose I’ve become a bit of an expert, you could say.  I make them all myself, and they’re beautiful little grim reapers - all daisy-chained together in a garland of death.  Their only reason for being I create them is for them to be detonated – to explode, to destroy.  To maim, hurt, and kill their intended targets.  Is it pretty?  Hell no, none of it is.   Blowing up a building is messy, but blowing up an entire human being to bits with a bomb is even messier.  I’ve often wondered what our dry-cleaning bill is for the Department of Administrative Research.  Gotta be pretty astronomical, I figure.

Tseng will tell you I’m too brash, too cocky, but if you want to know the truth - we are _all_ cocky, even him.  Every man and woman who has worn the Turks suit knows they were recruited and chosen for a certain set of skills they possessed.  Deadly skills, ingrained early on, honed over a lifetime, sharpened and perfected under Turks training.  We’re trained to kill, and some even say we _live_ to kill.  They might be right about that.  For that’s the moment when I feel the most alive now, when I’m on a mission; the smoking ruins of a structure I’ve just blown to smithereens in a pile of rubble behind me.   And it's not that I don't value human life - I do.  I also value loyalty, and if someone's crossed me or someone I care about -  well.   _Then their ass is mine._

I am not a vengeful man, as a general rule; but over my lifetime, I've seen some things.  Sometimes certain un-crossable lines are crossed - and when that happens, there is no turning back.  I will take my pound of flesh, and then some.

But back to the original question….preferred kill.   There are some that stand out more than others, for sure.  Then there are some that are a dull drone in the back of my head, like background music.  They blend together, the screams, the pleading shrieks, the ballsy threats against Shinra, accompanied by spitting in the face  - along with the personal insults that are uttered just before I activate the detonator, freezing that last word on their lips.   “Choose your words carefully, pal.”  I always warn them, before pressing that button and running like hell.

They never see death coming, and I’m usually long gone before it does.  That’s part of the drill, you see - engage, detonate, and run like a motherfucker.  I’m damned fast, probably the fastest Turk there ever was, though Reno might give me a run for my money.  Pun intended, there.

In Wutai, during the height of the war, and before I was recruited into the Turks, there had been several warring factions of Wutaian mafia, with Kisaragi in the middle, throwing up his hands and acting helpless.  He had no control over the situation, even as a high-ranking member of the Wutai royal family, the real power lay with the mafia.  Each side had recruited their goons, their lackeys.  Each one using propaganda and ideals to get them to think they were on the right side of the coin. 

Here’s what I’ve learned, though.  There is _no_ right side to anything.  There are three sides - us, them, and somewhere in between all of it lies the truth.  Which of course is a subjective son of a bitch in itself.

So being the fastest in my group, I was elected to go to Wutai to off certain targets - namely, Shinra's men.  Infantry, SOLDIER, whoever I could cut down, I _would_ cut down, because that's what I was paid to do.   I was packing a revolver along with all the chain bombs I’d just made.  Fourteen of those little beauties, pretty maids all in a row…a dozen bombs in each chain. Set them all off at once, in just the right sequence, and it’d be enough to take down a mako reactor.  Set them off at random, they’d easily take down two or three victims per chain.

I timed it perfectly; got Kisaragi to summon all these fools, young and old, to an old warehouse outside Da-chao.  Their pride, their idiocy, their illusion that they were invincible - it was their downfall, man.   He drew them all there with the promise of a New Wutai.  Funny, I think I heard the same speech from President Shinra about Neo-Midgar.  

But….I digress.

“ _Where’s Kisaragi?  Where’s Godo!”_ The shouts grew louder and I stuck to the shadows, and heard my captive audience growing pissed off early on, calling for the emperor.  Of course Godo wasn’t there, this was all a ruse, but they didn’t know that.  Kisaragi, with all his talk of honor and tradition - he was too honorable to betray his countrymen and his homeland, they thought.

Oh, but they thought wrong.  For enough gil, a man might sell his grandmother to a man in a business suit.  Or his grandmother’s soul at the very least.  Kisaragi, he sold the soul of Wutai.  I could tell by the expressions on every face there -  going from blank, to annoyed, to mildly annoyed, to outraged – they’d figured out they’d been duped.

That was the moment I chose – right then – to activate the detonator.  Because when people get all riled like that, en masse – they let their collective guard down.  They’re so busy being pissed off that they forget to watch their backs. 

It was impressive, all right; the place going up in a rolling ball of flame.  And then, anyone within earshot of the explosion moved in after they heard all the noise and the chaos.  Of course they did, it was only natural.  But I was ready for them, this time with a gun and a sword.   Gun in my right, swordin my left, I shot and slashed my way out of the angry mob of people.   

I honestly can’t remember how many people I killed that day; hundreds, probably.  But I was unstoppable, invincible.  I felt like a god; funny, that’s the name they stuck on me after that day. The Death God.   I was covered from head to toe in blood not my own – children ran screaming at the sight of me as I walked back through town.

I wondered then, as I do now – would my daughter have been frightened of me, seeing me like that? 

I guess I’ll never know.


End file.
